As librarians, we are always asking ourselves, “What does our community need? How can we make a difference in the lives of individuals and the community as a whole?” On this episode of Library Leadership Podcast, we talk with Kendra Trachta, Deputy Director of Sno-Isle Libraries, a two-county system in northwest Washington.

She helps us answer these questions by guiding us to become data-driven libraries and shares that this is not really about numbers; it’s about using numbers to understand people and purpose. She takes us from passive to active means for making informed decisions. Her favorite question is “Why?” Yours will be, too, after listening to this show.

Full Transcript

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As librarians, we’re always asking ourselves what does our
community need? How can we make a difference in the lives of individuals and
the community as a whole? Today on Library Leadership Podcast, we talk with
Kendra Trachta, Deputy Director of Sno-Isle Libraries in Washington State. She
teaches us, it’s not about numbers, it’s about people, and takes us from
passive to active means for making informed decisions. Welcome to the show
Kendra.

I am Deputy Director for Sno-Isle Libraries. We are a
two-county public library district in Washington State. We have 23 libraries
across the Snohomish and Island counties, with a service population of about
740,000 people.

Absolutely, one of the benefits of being a library system
like this is, of course, that all of the communities benefit from shared
resources. Our staff is amazing. But, there are different needs in the
different communities. How do we serve each community best, because the cookie
cutter approach does not work?

What it’s really about is being purpose driven. A lot of
people hear data driven and they think, oh, the numbers tell you what to do, or
it’s just very cut and dried. But really, as a purpose-driven organization, we
want to know are we achieving our purpose? That’s where the data comes in. It’s
not about numbers it’s about people, and are we doing the right work that
benefits the community in the right way?

That’s fantastic. I’ve heard you say it’s not about numbers
it’s about people and purpose. Which I think is fantastic. So, how do we do
this? And, what kinds of questions is this going to help us answer?

Well, it helps us answer things like, who are we? Who are we
reaching? How does that align with the actual makeup of our community? How are
people responding to our services? Are they learning something from us? Are
they just coming for fun? What we really need to start with is that question as
well. What are you trying to accomplish? What is your purpose? And really,
everything moves out from there.

Where do we start? I would say you first want to start by
looking at your community, talking with your community, and identifying what
community priorities are. Then looking at your services and saying, are our
services meeting these needs? And, how would you know that? It’s really about
asking yourself why, and what does this mean, over and over again.

So, here in Washington, kindergarten readiness is a top
priority for our state. And, there’s an annual assessment that all kindergarten
teachers do and that anonymized data is public data. So, here we look at
Snohomish and Island counties. Our kids in the aggregate are pretty ready for
kindergarten. So we think, well great, our storytimes, our early literacy
efforts are doing the job. When you break it down and look at the difference
between children from low-income households and children who are not from low-income
households, there is an amazing gap.

So, we start thinking, OK, we’re doing our regular thing.
But, here’s an audience that we absolutely have to reach. So, that’s when you
start thinking, OK, well how? How are we reaching this group? If we’re not,
what are some barriers between us and them? How do we overcome that? How do we
pinpoint where we can reach these children before they’re in kindergarten because
early literacy is our game. So, it’s just stopping to think about, what are we
really achieving?

Right, and early literacy being very important in your
community you’ve been able to establish that through your research and your
information collection, regarding these matters. And, I like what you said earlier,
data is really just information, and we love information in librarianship. So,
what should we be asking ourselves what kind of community data should we be
gathering?

Well, I think it again goes back to what are you trying to
accomplish. What do you want to make happen in your community?

There’s so much information out there. We have, of course,
census data, some basic demographic data. Now, we also have access to do the
market segmentation data that marketers use to sell us stuff. A lot of this
market segmentation data is household by household. Many public libraries have
these resources available for the public particularly if a library has a small
business focus. We’re very likely to have this sort of information.

We look at that and
then compare that information to our current customer base. What percentage of
your population has used the library in the last year, two years, is that
enough? There you’re talking about your reach. Are people aware? Are people
making use of some basic services? Is there a particular group that you are not
reaching through your services, through this market segmentation? Is there a
group that is a fairly large percentage of your population, and yet only a few
of them have library cards? Well, why is that? Is it that they’re not aware? Is
it that they have particular needs that the library services aren’t addressing?
You will never just get a magic number spit out that tells you, do this. I wish
you could, because boy, life would be so much easier.

It’s really leading you to, OK, what’s the next question I
need to ask? Which, as for particularly information services librarians, is
just fun, fun, fun. So, that’s what we are doing right now, looking at this
population across two counties which is very different from town to town and
seeing at the most basic level, who’s making use of the library. Whether it’s
using a computer or checking out an item either, tangible or electronic, and
who isn’t. And then, looking further to try to identify some reasons.

Yeah, yeah, these are important questions to ask. I will
admit that for some of us data collection is a little intimidating. You know, a
lot of us didn’t get into libraries because we’re numbers people, necessarily,
but where do we start looking? I know you talk about output data and outcome
data. Can you give us a pathway? Where do we go, and what do these data points
look like? How do we get started?

Sure. Output data is what we all think about when you hear
statistics or data and it’s what most libraries collect already, the number of
people who attended a program. The number of people who visited a library, if
you have door counters. The number of items checked out, those very basic
numbers that we all collect. Output data is really just counting. That can be
very useful in telling us what has happened. It tells us a scale of activity.
It can be really useful for planning your daily operation. If you can track
your foot traffic in the building and you see that, surprise, at 3 pm there’s
this huge jump in your busyness, and you happen to be next to a school. Yeah,
that just helps the manager schedule staff. It can be that simple, that
straightforward.

So, you might also be looking at just tracking your
circulation and you start seeing a change in the number of items checked out. I
think that the typical response is, oh my gosh, publicize, we’ve got to get
those numbers up. I think the first question should be, why, that’s always my
first question. What is happening here? Are the number of items being checked
out dropping? But, what about the number of active customers? What’s going on?
Rather than just stopping and reacting and saying, oh, but this is what we do,
more and more is better, maybe not. Maybe community needs have shifted.

That output data is a great starting point. It can be
misleading. It can be a trap if you don’t stop to think why, because if you
make that number the goal, such as circulation. We had a 10 bazillion circs
last year, and that’s our goal. Well, maybe this year it’s 9 bazillion, and,
the reaction is, oh my gosh, the number, we need to get that number up. Let’s
roll in renewals to bump that number up or well, you know, it was slow
everywhere, so we’ll just let that go.

No. First of all, if you’re inflating your numbers, why?
You’re burying your head in the sand, and your goal is not that number. Our
goal is to provide resources to our community. So, if their use of our
resources is changing, what do we ask?

That’s so important. I love your question, why. We all
collect these numbers. We all look at them and sometimes the numbers dictate
how we behave. And, I think this deeper inquiry into why, that’s important, or
has something shifted, makes a lot of sense.

Right, I really believe that if you start with your purpose,
that we have to change how we deliver on that purpose. But, that can be
difficult because we get so tied emotionally to what we do on a daily basis.
So, it really takes some bravery to say, you know what, we need to change
something or, in the long term we won’t be able to meet our purpose.

That’s fantastic. And, so that’s output data and we all have
a lot of that type of information. You also talked about outcome data, and how
that can be a little trickier. Can you share a bit about that?

Absolutely, in output data as I said, it’s counting things.
I used program attendance as an example. Outcome data is what we really want to
get at because outcome data tells us if what we’re trying to achieve has
actually occurred. It’s telling us, did we meet our goal? With programming, we
count attendees and we might say, wow, 50 people came to this. That equals
success. Well, maybe. I guess it would tell you that your title and your
publicity was successful. But, why did you offer that program in the first
place? And so, the PLA outcome is really getting at this same question.

If you’re holding a program, how do you want the customer,
the attendees, to benefit from it? So that question is, did you learn
something? Did you did you learn something that you’re going to use, those
sorts of questions. You might have 50 people come to this really exciting
sounding program and you ask these questions.

We do a paper, just in evaluation form at the end of the
program. We have a volunteer input the data. That’s a question people always
have. What if out of those 50 people one person said, yeah, I learned
something, and the other 49 said, not really. Wow, we need to rethink that
program. Do we need to present it in a different way? Is that just not the right
fit for our community? That’s the difference between output- 50 people
attended, and outcome, 1%, or 49%, let’s look on the bright side, actually
learned something from that program.

It really can. Starting all of this is like any other big
change in an organization, peculiarly, in an organization of dedicated people
who love their work, love their customers, love their organization. When you
first start talking about data and outcomes there’s that, it’s all about the
numbers. So, you have to, through communication and just ongoing discussion,
explain the real goal.

It is to make sure that the work we’re doing is benefiting
our customers. There’s always that worry, well are you saying my work isn’t good
enough, no, not at all. I think that the work we do is great. Nine times out of
ten, those outcomes are going to be really positive. It enables us to, maybe,
tweak some things in our work. But, also it enables us to tell the community,
here’s the difference we are making in the community, just constantly sharing
back with staff and the media and elected officials the results.

So, we’re emotional. We’re human beings. I don’t want to
dismiss people’s feelings of, well are you saying my work isn’t valued? My
answer is, it is absolutely valued. I want to be able to have some really firm
information about it to share out.

We have an annual third-grade reading challenge. That is
part of our early literacy effort. Early literacy goes through third grade and
that’s our last chance to really make lifelong readers, people who enjoy
reading. Of course, various studies show that helps them be successful in
school and in life, being able to interpret what they read. We have about 50
schools that participate every year. It’s a trivia contest. We have 1300
students participate. In the past we would say, whoo, we did this big thing and
we had 1300 third graders participate, and that is great, the participation is
great. It shows interest. It shows that some kids read some books.

What we really want to know is, did the reading challenge
help the kids to enjoy reading more? Did it make them feel more comfortable
reading? Do they think their reading improved as a result of their
participation? That is very different from saying, this large number
participated. So when we ask after the event, again, we send a paper survey out
to the kids, and to the parent. We had 94% of those kids, and remember 1300
participated, 94% said, yeah, reading’s more fun now.

We had 94% of the kids say, yeah, I’m more confident in my
reading ability. And, 84% said, yeah, now I’m reading for fun more often. That
coupled with, of course, the great heartwarming story and the photos of the
kids’ faces as they’re sharing their knowledge of these books, says this is
fun. We are reaching a large audience, and here are the real differences we’re
making in their lives. And, of course, that rolls up to benefiting the whole
community.

Well, there are two books that I really look to as my
business books. Neither of these books are really new but, I love Good to Great with the focus it brings
to having a purpose and sticking to it, not putting your blinders on, not
getting in a rut. But, really being driven by your purpose and what you want to
make happen. And, I am sure that came through loud and clear this morning.

Then, my other book that I love is Drive by Daniel Pink. It is not really a business book, but it
talks about what motivates us as humans. And, the big reveal, which I
completely, completely believe is, that what drives us is wanting to make a
difference, wanting to be part of something good. It’s not about the carrot or
the prizes. It’s that intrinsic motivation and the understanding that if I do
this, I’m part of this result.

Exactly, and that’s why I worry when people say, ah, she’s
all about the numbers because I’m really all about the people. By looking at
our work and evaluating it, in this slightly different way, it helps us get
better, particularly if the results aren’t what we had hoped for. We learn. We
try again. We think why didn’t it work the way we thought it would, and when it
does work out the way we intended it just helps us articulate the value we
bring. So that the public library doesn’t just get pigeonholed as a nice to
have. It is understood as a critical component in a successful community.

I would just share that it is a commitment. It’s ongoing,
and you know in a profession of committed people that’s not difficult, but,
it’s not an overnight change. There are a lot of data tools out there, some
great data collection, data visualization tools. What’s most important is really
being brave enough to change your mindset and say, we need to dig deeper. We
need to ask why. And then, we need to ask why. And then, we need to ask why
again, so that we can really ensure that we’re being the best public library we
can be for the people we are here to serve. And, that’s tough, because we love
what we do currently and that could change. So, that’s the hardest part, is the
emotional part. Installing new software is a breeze.

Yes, thanks, Adrian. For me personally, it means being
someone who is actively trying to make our community and our world a better
place, there are so many people who work to make our world a better place.

I love information. People having access to information,
reading materials throughout their lives is critical to a really strong
society. I see my role as a librarian as one of the mainstays in our community.
And, I’m really proud of our work.

It’s work worth being proud of. Thank you for being a huge
part of it in our profession. It’s been wonderful to talk to you today, Kendra.
I think you’ve given us all a lot of courage to look at our numbers and move
forward with data-driven decisions. So, thanks for being on the show.

You’ve been listening to Library Leadership Podcast. I’m
your host Adrian Herrick Juarez. Our producer is Nate Vineyard. More episodes
can be found at libraryleadershippodcast.com
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podcasts. Thank you for listening. We’ll see you next time.

Why We Burned Our First Leadership Book, or How to Develop a Leadership Path that Holds Personal Meaning

Presenter: Adriane Herrick Jaurez

Co-Presenter : Becca Lael – Park City Library

Utah Library Association Conference

Thursday, May 16, 1:30-2:20pm

Mountain America Expo Center

How can we develop a leadership path that holds personal meaning? Inspired by interviews from the Library Leadership Podcast, a variety of strategic insights will show us how everyone can improve their leadership to personally shape their workplace, the community they serve, and the trajectory of the library profession. Attendees will learn how one library manager’s leadership path was transformed to include personal meaning, resulting in braver development.

Commencement Speaker for the Graduation of the Utah State Regional Master of Library Science ProgramFriday, January 5, 7:00pm Viridian Event Center I will be giving a commencement speech for the graduating class of Cohort 12.

Utah State History Conference
October 10th– 11th, 2017 Rio Grande Depot, 300 S. Rio Grande Street, Salt Lake City, UT Honoring the Past, Moving Into the Future: The Renovation of the Historic Park City Library that Developed a Dynamic 21st Century Library while Achieving National Historic Register Designation.

Nevada/Mountain Plains Library Association Joint ConferenceOctober 16th – 18th, 2017 Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, 50 US-50, Stateline, NV89449
Lightning-round presentation on how The Park City Library recently underwent a $9.6M library renovation that included the creation of a media lab that included a sound booth, green screen, film equipment, and other high tech amenities to foster independent media production in a ‘film-centric’ mountain town that is accessible to everyone, not just movie producers.